The mum said: "I have had friends and family call up thinking Jasper actually has cancer. It is really upsetting and distressing"

Now his mum, nursery manager Sarah Allen, 36, says that photos of Jasper's infected chickenpox sores have been stolen by social media crooks.

Pages have been set up claiming that little Jasper has cancer, and saying his family need money for surgery.

The scamming practice is known as "Like Farming".

What is 'Like Farming'

"Like Farming" is a practice on social media in which scammers attempt gain as many 'likes' or 'shares' on a page to gather as large an audience as possible. Once they have achieved enough 'likes' through popular or emotive content, they will replace the original post with advertising in a bid to 'cash-in' on the popularity of the original posts. It is directly prohibited by Facebook's rules, however it can be difficult for social media bosses to rule on whether original posts are real or fake until it is too late.

Sarah, from St Neots, Cambridgeshire, claims that she has reported similar instances of the images being used to Facebook at least 30 times in the past.

However they are yet to all be taken down.

Facebook is working through all the links Sarah sent to the team to review them and see if they breach the social media giant's terms and conditions.

The online company is also working with the mother to resolve the matter as soon as possible.

Mum-of-two Sarah, who also has a daughter Poppy, six, with 38-year-old postman husband Keit, said: "I first saw and reported the pictures two or three weeks ago.

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"Everyone is commenting on the posts saying it is not cancer, it is a little boy with chicken pox.
"I have reported it for nudity, for copyright and for inappropriate content – about 30 times in total.
"I have had so many people message me about it and I keep reporting it constantly, lots of my friends have reported it too.
"I received a message from Facebook saying it had been removed but it is still there.
"Apparently these fake pages share as much as they could to get likes and followers, then when they have enough they sell the page to someone who wants it for business.

Mercury Press

The fake posts have been shared more widely than Sarah's awareness campaign

"Now this fake post has more shares than my petition calling on the government to make the chickenpox vaccination part of the NHS' routine childhood immunisation schedule.
"Facebook need to make the reporting process better and take things like this down straight away. You can't even have a breastfeeding photograph on Facebook without it being taken down, but somehow this is fine?"

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